Ruth Nakamura · June 21, 2026
It was the last week of June when my kitchen became a purple disaster zone. My mulberry harvest had exploded—hands stained past the wrist, a strainer overflowing with fruit every 36 hours, and my freezer already buried under spring’s jam projects and last year’s frozen berries. I found myself at 11 PM holding a bowl … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 8, 2026
My name is Ruth Nakamura, and I’ve spent the last 15 years cultivating a backyard orchard in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, focusing primarily on mulberries. When I first started my journey, I was drawn in by the sweet, juicy berries and the thrill of growing something unique. Over the years, I’ve planted and nurtured 12 … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 3, 2026
A single mature mulberry tree on my property yielded 47 pounds of fruit across one five-day window last July—and that was after I’d already missed the first flush because I was traveling. That kind of sudden glut is exactly why I stopped relying on freezer space and jam-making alone. Mulberries demand a preservation method that … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · December 18, 2025
I walk out to my Pakistan mulberry every July with a harvest bucket and come back with purple-stained hands up past my elbows—a color that doesn’t wash off for a week and has definitely raised eyebrows at dinner parties. The real surprise wasn’t the staining, though. It was discovering that a proper freezing routine was … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · December 16, 2025
Mulberries deteriorate faster than almost any other fruit you can grow. That reality hits hard when you’ve spent months tending the tree only to watch your harvest turn to pulp. The window between “perfectly ripe” and “unusable mush” is genuinely narrow—somewhere around 48 hours if you do nothing. But I’ve spent over a decade growing … Read more
